Newly
minted NDP MPs are complaining to the media that outgoing MPs shredded constituency files rather than turn them over when they took office. Pardon me
while I make a call to the Minister of State for Poor Little Bunny. These files
tend to be things like immigration forms that constituents ask their MPs to
help them with. But here’s the thing – any of these matters aren’t actually an
MP’s job. Sure, it’s become what’s expected of them because a) since the
explosion in the size and complexity of the civil service since Confederation,
people turned to their MPs to act as a kind of ombudsman when people have
difficulty with the bureaucracy, and b) it’s a way of doing good “constituency
work,” which these MPs will hope earn them goodwill and hence votes. But given
our decline in civic literacy, both the voting public and MPs have determined
this to be an integral part of their duties, some MPs going so far as to hire a
full-time staffer just to deal with immigration cases. Not someone to help them
track things like government spending so that these MPs can do their actual job
of – say it with me – holding the government to account by determining whether
or not to grant supply. It’s all part of the “working for you” mentality of
pandering that is killing the system. And the NDP especially, with their
charming but wrong notions that Parliament is a cooperative board game where
everyone needs to “work together” so that everybody can win (rather than, you
know, actually hold a government to account), feel that it’s somehow unfair
that they – and by extension their constituents – are being “punished” when
these constituency files end up in the shredder. Never mind privacy laws – you
know, the real reason files like these get shredded – we need to pander more.
So if anyone is being “childish” about this, it’s not the outgoing MPs who are following
those privacy laws – it’s the NDP MPs whining that they have to put more effort
into pandering instead of actually doing their jobs.
While
Jason Kenney crows about the “success” of his new programme of getting people
to inform on suspected “war criminals,” after two are arrested after their
names and faces made public, here are a bunch of questions that are raised
about this practice, including the fact that they’re putting this into the
hands of immigration officials, who have much laxer standards for evidence than
say, oh, a criminal court, which these suspects haven’t been convicted by.
More
premiers are lining up against Harper’s Senate “reform” bill. As well they
should, seeing as it’s unconstitutional.
Remember
our promise to resettle Afghan translators and their families in Canada because
we put them at risk for retribution? And how we were totally going to resettle
about five hundred of them…next year, maybe? Here’s a story that talks to them about the danger they put their families in.
Here’s
a bit more about the needed renovations to 24 Sussex, and potential green fixes that can be made.
And Kady
O’Malley continues her comparison of our Parliament with that of Great Britain,
and this time looks at the House of Commons itself, and ways in which theirs is
structured to provide for better debate.